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Close faster with complete and accurate results.
Empower Accounting to manage and control the end-to-end financial close process by automating accounting workflows, providing a centralized and secure workspace to perform period-end accounting activities, and streamlining financial reporting.
Standardize, control, and streamline reconciliations.
Increase accuracy and efficiency across your account reconciliation process and produce timely and accurate financial statements. Drive accuracy in the financial close by providing a streamlined method to substantiate your balance sheet.
Drive visibility, accountability, and control across every accounting checklist.
Standardize, accelerate, and centrally manage accounting processes – from month-end close tasks to PBC checklists – with hierarchical task lists, role-based workflows, and real-time dashboards.
Match, analyze, and reconcile millions of transactions in minutes.
Streamline and automate detail-heavy reconciliations, such as bank reconciliations, credit card matching, intercompany reconciliations, and invoice-to-PO matching all in one centralized workspace.
Centralize, manage, and automate journal entries.
Create, review, and approve journals, then electronically certify, post them to and store them with all supporting documentation. Automatically create, populate, and post journals to your ERP based on your rules.
Elevate control in the cloud.
Unify all compliance documentation, projects, and stakeholders in one globally accessible, cloud platform to maximize visibility. Link controls to related risks, narratives, and projects, and ensure version control.
Continuously monitor for risk with automated fluctuation analysis.
Calculate and identify account balance and activity fluctuations automatically to continuously monitor for risk, ensure the effective and timely execution of critical management review controls, and support agile decision-making.
Simplify, standardize, and automate your financial close in SAP.
Streamline and automate activities in SAP with task scheduling and execution, activity monitoring, and outcome verification.
Maximize working capital and release cash from your balance sheet.
Maximize working capital with the only unified platform for collecting cash, providing credit, and understanding cash flow. Transform your accounts receivable processes with intelligent AR automation that delivers value across your business.
Apply customer payments to invoices automatically.
Transform your order-to-cash cycle and speed up your cash application process by instantly matching and accurately applying customer payments to customer invoices in your ERP.
Create and operate risk polices with dynamic insights.
Understand customer data and performance behaviors to minimize the risk of bad debt and the impact of late payments. Monitor changes in real time to identify and analyze customer risk signals.
Release cash from customers and reduce DSO.
Improve the prioritization of customer calls, reduce days sales outstanding, and watch productivity rise with more dynamic, accurate, and smarter collection management processes.
Resolve customer disputes promptly to collect debt.
Accelerate dispute resolution with automated workflows and maintain customer relationships with operational reporting. Unlock full control and visibility of disputes and provide better insight into how they impact KPIs, such as DSO and aged debt provisions.
Maximize your time with data-driven prioritization.
Make the most of your team’s time by automating accounts receivables tasks and using data to drive priority, action, and results. Monitor and analyze user performance, ensuring key actions quickly.
Turn payment data into actionable, real-time intelligence.
Automatically process and analyze critical information such as sales and payment performance data, customer payment trends, and DSO to better manage risk and develop strategies to improve operational performance.
Unlock growth capacity with tax-effective intercompany operations.
Centralize, streamline, and automate end-to-end intercompany operations with global billing, payment, and automated reconciliation capabilities that provide speed and accuracy. Ignite staff efficiency and advance your business to more profitable growth.
Automate, optimize, and manage intercompany non-trade transactions.
Ensure consistent regulatory and tax compliance by automating non-trade transactions and invoices while enforcing trading relationships and policies, as well as required taxes and transfer pricing.
Centralize, streamline, and automate intercompany reconciliations and dispute management.
Seamlessly integrate with all intercompany systems and data sources. Automatically identify intercompany exceptions and underlying transactions causing out-of-balances with rules-based solutions to resolve discrepancies quickly.
Streamline and automate intercompany transaction netting and settlement to ensure cash precision.
Enable greater collaboration between Accounting and Treasury with real-time visibility into open transactions. Integrate with treasury systems to facilitate and streamline netting, settlement, and clearing to optimize working capital.
Get set up quickly for a streamlined and automated close.
The path from traditional to modern accounting is different for every organization. BlackLine’s Modern Accounting Playbook delivers a proven-practices approach to help you identify and prioritize your organization’s critical accounting gaps and map out an achievable path to success.
Save time and cost, decrease risk, and elevate the organization.
BlackLine’s foundation for modern accounting creates a streamlined and automated close. We’re dedicated to delivering the most value in the shortest amount of time, equipping you to not only control close chaos, but also foster F&A excellence.
Invest in your future by unifying and automating accounting work.
To sustain timely performance of daily activities, banking and financial services organizations are turning to modern accounting and finance practices. It’s no longer a matter of whether or not to digitally transform. It’s a matter of when and how.
Adapt to changing consumer preferences with agile accounting.
To mitigate financial statement risk and increase operational effectiveness, consumer goods organizations are turning to modern accounting and leading best practices. Simply sticking with ‘the way it’s always been done’ is a thing of the past.
Energize your accounting team by creating capacity with automation.
While you are innovating to produce safe, reliable, and sustainable products and services, our solutions help accounting teams save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
Align healthcare accounting teams to revenue-driving activities.
Working capital, cash flows, collections opportunities, and other critical metrics depend on timely and accurate processes. Ensure services revenue has been accurately recorded and related payments are reflected properly on the balance sheet.
Unlock capacity and strengthen resilience by automating accounting.
To respond and lead amid supply chain challenges demands on accounting teams in manufacturing companies are higher than ever. Guide your business with agility by standardizing processes, automating routine work, and increasing visibility.
Tie out millions of transactions automatically.
Retailers are recalibrating their strategies and investing in innovative business models to drive transformation quickly, profitably, and at scale. Save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to support your organization's strategic objectives.
Transform the way you work.
You've transformed the way we experience the world. It's time to embrace modern accounting technology to save time, reduce risk, and create capacity to focus your time on what matters most.
BlackLine is part of your SAP financial mission control center. Our solutions complement SAP software as part of an end-to-end offering for Finance & Accounting. BlackLine solutions address the traditional manual processes that are performed by accountants outside the ERP, often in spreadsheets.
Global brands and the fastest growing companies run Oracle and choose BlackLine to accelerate digital transformation. BlackLine delivers comprehensive solutions that unify accounting and finance operations across your Oracle landscape.
Gain global visibility and insight into accounting processes while reducing risk, increasing productivity, and ensuring accuracy. Close the gaps left in critical finance and accounting processes with minimal IT support.
Adapt and innovate with a hyperconnected Accounting function and give everyone the insights and freedom to thrive by connecting your data, processes, and teams with intelligent automation solutions for accounting needs.
ESG is an opportunity for F&A teams to have a direct impact on how their organizations interact with the communities around them and how they deliver value to their stakeholders.
Rising labor costs and shifting expectations are contributing to unprecedented change in the labor market and altering the way companies and their executives think about talent management.
ERP transformations are business transformations. Finance and accounting expertise is not only needed to prevent ERP transformation failures, but F&A leaders are poised to help drive project plans and outcomes.
In good company.
More than 4,000 companies of all sizes, across all industries, trust BlackLine to help them modernize their financial close, accounts receivable, and intercompany accounting processes.
Powerful technology is only part of the story.
To truly transform your finance and accounting processes, you need the guidance of a trusted partner. Our proven approach has helped thousands of customers identify and address bottlenecks to free up capacity, strengthen controls, and deliver measurable results.
Your playbook for rapid success and proven value.
Using our unique experience and expertise, we will help you identify your most pressing accounting challenges and quickly deploy our software by providing a clear vision and predictable, confident delivery and implementation.
Guided, connected, and committed to your success.
BlackLine Services combine leading practices and expert guidance with best-in-class technology to help your F&A organization seamlessly implement sound processes and solutions, identify new opportunities for accounting optimization, and expand into areas you never imagined you would have the time to tackle.
Industry-leading customer support anytime, anywhere
BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it.
Integrate your accounting operations with open APIs.
Our API-first development strategy gives you the keys to integrate your finance tech stack - from one ERP to one hundred - and create seamless data flows in and out of BlackLine.
Join an exclusive community of more than 350,000 accounting professionals.
BlackLine users around the world get access to key resources to develop expertise, interact with peers in F&A to exchange ideas and leading practices, and share their feedback to guide future product development.
Connect with peers across Finance & Accounting.
Whether new to BlackLine or a longtime customer, we curate events to guide you along every step of your modern accounting journey.
Hear from F&A thought leaders and customers like you.
Explore our schedule of upcoming webinars to find inspiration, including industry experts, strategic alliance partners, and boundary-pushing customers. And, earn CPE credits while you're at it.
Catch up on the latest finance transformation guidance.
Check out our most recent webinars dedicated to modern accounting. If you recently attended webinar you loved, find it here and share the link with your colleagues.
Dive into digital finance transformation.
Explore the future of accounting over a cup of coffee with our curated collection of white papers and ebooks written to help you consider how you will transform your people, process, and technology.
Stay on top of the latest accounting trends.
BlackLine Magazine provides daily updates on everything from companies that have transformed F&A to new regulations that are coming to disrupt your day, week, and month. Check back often for the latest commentary and guidance.
Brush up on key accounting terms.
Whether you're new to F&A or an experienced professional, sometimes you need a refresher on common finance and accounting terms and their definitions. BlackLine's glossary provides descriptions for industry words and phrases, answers to frequently asked questions, and links to additional resources.
We are here for your mission-critical accounting operations.
BlackLine provides global product support across geographies, languages, and time zones, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We are here for you with industry-leading support whenever and wherever you need it.
Since our founding in 2001, BlackLine has become a leading provider of cloud software that automates and controls critical accounting processes.
Companies come to BlackLine because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. We help them move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility.
BlackLine's leadership team is built on experience and expertise. Every executive is committed to ensuring transformational success for every customer.
At BlackLine, we live by these tenets and always put people first. We are committed to fostering an environment where differences are valued and practices are equitable.
BlackLine is committed to doing our part to create a more sustainable and equitable world, from setting high environmental standards in all BlackLine workplaces to supporting employee health and wellbeing, building strong relationships with suppliers from underrepresented communities, protecting customers’ data security and privacy and giving back to the community.
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BlackLine is a high-growth, SaaS business that is transforming and modernizing the way finance and accounting departments operate. Our cloud software automates critical finance and accounting processes. We empower companies of all sizes across all industries to improve the integrity of their financial reporting, achieve efficiencies and enhance real-time visibility into their operations.
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Integrate Your Finance Tech Stack
BlackLine and our ecosystem of software and cloud partners work together to transform our joint customers’ finance and accounting processes. Together, we provide innovative solutions that help F&A teams achieve shorter close cycles and better controls, enabling them to drive better decision-making across the company.
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BlackLine partners with top global Business Process Outsourcers and equips them with solutions to better serve their clients and achieve market-leading automation, efficiencies, and risk control. By outsourcing, businesses can achieve stronger compliance, gain a deeper level of industry knowledge, and grow without unnecessary costs.
July 14, 2022
5 minute read
Part 1 of this series provided an overview of the process, tax, and regulatory complexities of intercompany service transactions. Part 2 and Part 3 took a more in-depth look at process- and tax-related challenges. In this final installment, we review the regulatory issues that can complicate intercompany transactions.
For companies that transact globally, a complex web of disparate, ever-changing, country-specific regulations govern many aspects of the organization’s operations, including intercompany service transactions. These regulatory requirements have the potential to bog down corporate back-office functions, especially if the organization fails to establish the proper processes, controls, and governance.
For instance, it’s not uncommon for multinationals to run into trouble settling intercompany transactions simply because they don’t have an accurate way to meet the regulatory requirements that make settlement possible. Ever-changing requirements vary considerably from one country to the next and compound the complexity many organizations are forced to navigate.
Treasury-related regulations are among the many requirements that can drive complications. A prime example is the movement of cash across borders. In China, South Africa, and other currency-restricted countries, regulations on the movement of cash can make it difficult to be paid, or to net payments, out of those jurisdictions. If an entity based in those countries provides intercompany services to entities in other regions, it can’t simply issue an intercompany invoice and expect payment through its standard processes.
Unless the company meets the relevant requirements (such as currency control limitations, rules forcing the currency to be used, supporting documentation as to the nature of the underlying transaction), cash cannot leave that jurisdiction, creating a major hurdle to netting payments and settling transactions.
Foreign exchange issues also present challenges for multinational companies. Billing services across borders often results in foreign exchange gains or losses. If these transactions remain unsettled due to regulatory missteps, it can generate unrealized gains and losses, making it difficult to balance and close the books.
Treasury-related complexities such as these span the entire intercompany process—from invoice creation, to journal entries, to settlement. As a result, it’s not feasible to develop a standard intercompany transaction process that fits worldwide. While the bulk of the process can (and should) be standardized, it will need to accommodate and reflect differences in regulatory requirements across the globe. The more manual steps in the intercompany process, the more challenging it will be to adapt the process to handle country-specific regulatory exceptions.
Regulations that govern indirect taxes also can create intercompany service transaction difficulties, especially as the regulatory climate around withholding and paying indirect taxes grows more complex.
Historically, most countries adopted a consistent standard that required the seller (the entity billing for the service) to apply the correct indirect tax on the invoice and the buyer (the entity paying for the service) to pay the stated tax. Today, you’ll find a more diverse range of approaches to indirect tax. In other countries, such as in Sweden and Poland, industry-specific (such as the construction industry) invoicing measures apply that seek to combat indirect tax (VAT) fraud by either putting the onus of VAT reporting exclusively on the buyer or require the indirect tax to be paid into a government-controlled bank account instead of a seller bank account. Such indirect tax regulations can vary both by country and by industry.
Regulations also can impact the types of intercompany service transactions you can engage in and bill for legally. In some countries, an employee in one entity can’t provide tax services to other entities unless he/she is a licensed accountant in that jurisdiction. Similarly, an employer can’t provide legal services to another internal entity unless the staff member involved is admitted to the bar in that jurisdiction.
Some countries have labor regulations that prohibit one entity from providing staff resources to another unless the company is licensed to operate as a temporary staffing agent. Even the mechanics of issuing the intercompany invoice can run afoul of regulators. In heavily regulated countries, intercompany charges can’t be settled unless there is a physical invoice, which many entities don’t generate for intercompany transactions.
The task of reporting on intercompany service transactions requires compliance with a whole host of regulations that vary by country, and failure to comply can result in tax penalties and other costly consequences. Companies typically must report on the nature of the services provided, the transfer price, and any settlement discrepancies (both within an entity and across the enterprise).
Additionally, some countries require organizations to report certain data to their central bank or other authorities that track trade balances, such as total transactions for a given period or individual transactions that exceed a certain dollar amount. Gathering, calculating, and reporting all the required data, accurately and in a format that meets each country’s requirements, can be difficult when intercompany processes are manual, decentralized, and require working across disparate ERP systems.
A challenging regulatory landscape can both complicate and strain a global organization’s intercompany processes. The most common process pain points triggered by regulatory requirements include:
Keeping policies and procedures current on intercompany regulations that differ greatly across the globe and change frequently
Continually updating multiple ERP systems each time an intercompany regulation changes
Ensuring that complex regulations are made easy for staff to understand—eliminating the inconsistencies that can result when different entities don’t interpret and follow a regulation the same way
Additionally, when different entities use different ERP systems, the company can lose transparency related to the line-level details of each transaction. In fact, it’s this very loss of transparency that has spurred the trend toward tighter regulations around intercompany service transactions (e.g., BEAT penalties). To reduce the opportunity for unscrupulous companies to hide money from tax authorities and other agencies, countries have instituted stricter regulations designed to improve controls and transparency.
The more manual the intercompany service transaction process, the more difficult, time-consuming, and costly it is to meet the associated regulatory requirements. That’s why many global organizations turn to BlackLine Intercompany for technologies that reduce the regulatory, tax, and process complexities and risks of their intercompany service transactions.
Get your copy of a global survey research report that examines essential questions about the state of intercompany at multinational companies.